Mission 5: Operation Blue Eagle

First, for general's promotions pick two levels of A-10s, the paladin tank, and pathfinders. Get the buildings you need - a strategy center, detention camp and air field. one more chinook to gather supplies faster (only one can access the dock at a time) and you're ready to start thinking offensive. Get the capture building tech from the barracks and send your rangers southeast of your base and capture the hospital. Don't bother building any ground units here, just focus on the air field and strategy center. Your base is going to be cut off very shortly. Let your chinooks do some gathering for a while and get three more comanches (bringing your total to five) with rocket pods out of your air field to help defend when you build your new base.

Pick the bombardment battle plan with the strategy center (research composite armor and advanced training, too!) and, getting battle drones for all your tanks, set off with all the forces you started with across the bridge. Before you attack, use the spy satellite ability of the command center to detect the area ahead of your troops. Use the A-10 strike on the best cluster of enemies you can find. The GLA base shouldn't be too heavily built up and you'll be able to destroy it rather quickly. I didn't face anything harder than a few marauder tanks and rocket buggies. During the battle, bring your construction dozer over to save it from being cut off. When you're done cleaning up the GLA, that damn dam breaks again. This time, you're on the receiving end. The western base is cut off and you're forced to build a new one. Aren't you glad you didn't build a bunch of tanks?

The western base is still a good place for your air field, strategy center, detention camp and command center (as well as power plants). Sell the barracks and war factory; you won't be needing them. Build a barracks and war factory on the new side. Finally, when you have a supply center (place it near the dock to the southeast of the landing zone) built on the eastern side, sell the old one. Just north of your new location is an oil refinery, which reduces the cost of vehicles; you'll definitely want to take control of that. Use the intelligence ability of the detention center to see enemy locations. With your tanks it should be very easy to get rid of the GLA tunnel network near the refinery and control the area. Build a scout drone on one of your vehicles to detect the demo traps near the refinery (west of it) then capture it with your rangers.

You should now be able to buy paladin tanks for a mere 990 instead of $1100. Build about four to go with your tanks and pump out at least five pathfinders. Keep your comanches home to defend against any GLA attack. Once your paladins and pathfinders are ready, begin your attack following the path that leads northwest of the refinery you captured. Keep the tanks in front with the pathfinders just behind them. You should let the tanks guard the area you're fighting in while you use the pathfinders to snipe enemy terrorists and RPG troopers. Pathfinders can snipe the RPG troops inside stinger sites, also, making them useless!

Keep control of your pathfinders and they'll be the stars of the mission. They'll gain elite status very quickly, and your tanks will be able to destroy the GLA vehicles easily. As you get closer to the GLA base you'll want to make sure you have some scount drones flying to detect demo traps, or just keep your pathfinders close. You should have no trouble getting all the way to the scud storm like this. I had two minutes to go before they could launch it--a large margin of error.